an essay about the great depression

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The Great Depression Essay

The recession of the American economy led to the greatest depression that has never been experienced in the American economic history. The Great Depression, experienced between 1929 and 1932, was a period of extreme hardship in America as it forced Americans to experience an economic crisis which left many jobless and hopeless. It was the worst and longest difficult situation in the country’s economic history that threw many hardworking people into poverty. People lost their homes, farms as well as their businesses (Gunderson 4). The Great Depression led to economic stagnation and widespread unemployment and also the depression was experienced in virtually all in every major industrialized country (Hall and Ferguson 2). The impact of the Great Depression was devastating as many individuals lost their homes because they had no work and a steady income and as a result, most of them were forced to live in makeshift dwellings with poor condition and sanitation. Many children dropped out of school and married women were forced to carry a greater domestic burden. More so, the depression widened the gap between the rich and the poor (Freedman 14) because many poor individuals suffered the hardships during this period while the rich remained unaffected. This paper discusses the period of Great Depression and it covers the life during this time and how the city dwellers, farmers, children and minority groups were affected. The Great Depression started following the occurrence of the Wall Street crash and rapidly spread in different parts of the world; however, some have argued that it was triggered by mistakes in monetary policy and poor government policy (Evans 15). Different hardships and challenges were experience by individuals in different parts of the world with many people left with no work. More so, individuals especially farmers suffered from poverty and low profits, deflation and they had no opportunity for personal and economic growth. Notably, different people were affected differently, for instance, unemployment affected men and they were desperate for work while children were forced to leave school and search for something to do so as to earn money for their family. Farmers were greatly affected because this period led to decrease in price in the prices of their crops and livestock and they still worked hard to produce more so as to pay their debts, taxes and living expenses. The period before this economic crisis, farmers were already losing money due to industrialization in cities and so most of them were renting their land and machinery. When the depression started, prices on food produced by farmers deflated leaving them incapable of making profit and so they stopped selling their farm products and this in turn affected the city dwellers that were unable to produce their own food. Undoubtedly, after the stock market crash, many firms declined and many workers were forced out of their jobs because there were really no jobs. Moreover, many people had no money to purchase commodities and so the consumer demand for manufactured goods reduced significantly. Sadly, individuals had to learn to do without new clothing. The prices dropped significantly leaving farmers bankrupt and as a result most of them lost their farms. Some farmers were angry and desperate proposing that the government should intervene and ensure that farm families remain in their respective homes. But again, farmers were better off than city dwellers because they could produce much of their own food. Many farm families had large gardens with enough food crops and in some families, women made clothes from flour and feed sacks and generally, these farm families learned how to survive with what they have and little money.

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Furthermore, the town and cities suffered too, for instance, as the factories were shutting down following the depression many industrial workers were left jobless. The life in the city was not easy as many individuals lived in overcrowded and unheated houses with poor sanitation. In addition, many firms closed and many individuals lost their jobs and had to deal with the reality of living in poverty. Town families were unable to produce their own food and so many city dwellers often went hungry during this period. During winter, they had hard times overcoming the cold because they had no money to buy coal to warm their houses. During the depression, the known role of women was homemaking because they had a difficult time finding jobs and so the only thing they were supposedly good at was preparing meals for their families and keeping their families together. Some women who managed to have jobs supported their families in overcoming this difficult time. Accordingly, many children were deprived their right to have access to quality education because many societies had to close down their schools due to lack of money. Some of them managed to be in schools but majority dropped out. More so, they suffered from malnutrition and those in rural areas were worse off because with the family’s low income, they were unable to purchase adequate nutritional food for all family members. Many children and even adults died from diseases and malnutrition (Gunderson 4). The minority groups in America especially the African American population who lived in rural areas working on the farms of white owners. Even though they lived in poverty, the Depression made the situation worse as their lived changed completely and remained extremely poor because the farmers they were working for had lost their land. All in all, many families struggled to leave on low incomes or no jobs with many children starving; lacked shelter and clothing as well as medical attention (Freedman 4).

In conclusion, the Great Depression was a tragic time in American history that left many people poor, unemployed or little pay, and children forced to work at a younger age. The Great Depression affected everyone from children to adults, farmers to city dwellers and so everyone’s lives changed drastically by the events experienced during this period. Many individuals were unemployed and remained desperate searching for better lives. In addition, children had no access to quality education as most of them left school and sadly they accompanied their mothers to look for work and search for a new life. However, some people particularly the employers and the wealthy were not affected during this period because they were protected from the depression with their position in the society.

Works Cited

Evans, Paul. “What Caused the Great Depression in the United States?” Managerial Finance 23.2 (1997): 15-24.

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Freedman, Russell. Children of the Great Depression. New York: Clarion Books, 2005. Print.

Gunderson, Cory G. The Great Depression. Edina, Minn: ABDO Pub, 2004. Internet resource.

Hall, Thomas E, and Ferguson J D. The Great Depression: An International Disaster of Perverse Economic Policies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. Internet resource.

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The Great Depression

“Regarding the Great Depression, … we did it. We’re very sorry. … We won’t do it again.” —Ben Bernanke, November 8, 2002, in a speech given at “A Conference to Honor Milton Friedman … On the Occasion of His 90th Birthday.”

In 2002, Ben Bernanke , then a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, acknowledged publicly what economists have long believed. The Federal Reserve’s mistakes contributed to the “worst economic disaster in American history” (Bernanke 2002).

Bernanke, like other economic historians, characterized the Great Depression as a disaster because of its length, depth, and consequences. The Depression lasted a decade, beginning in 1929 and ending during World War II. Industrial production plummeted. Unemployment soared. Families suffered. Marriage rates fell. The contraction began in the United States and spread around the globe. The Depression was the longest and deepest downturn in the history of the United States and the modern industrial economy.

The Great Depression began in August 1929, when the economic expansion of the Roaring Twenties came to an end. A series of financial crises punctuated the contraction. These crises included a stock market crash in 1929 , a series of regional banking panics in 1930 and 1931 , and a series of national and international financial crises from 1931 through 1933 . The downturn hit bottom in March 1933, when the commercial banking system collapsed and President Roosevelt declared a national banking holiday . 1    Sweeping reforms of the financial system accompanied the economic recovery, which was interrupted by a double-dip recession in 1937 . Return to full output and employment occurred during the Second World War.

To understand Bernanke’s statement, one needs to know what he meant by “we,” “did it,” and “won’t do it again.”

By “we,” Bernanke meant the leaders of the Federal Reserve System. At the start of the Depression, the Federal Reserve’s decision-making structure was decentralized and often ineffective. Each district had a governor who set policies for his district, although some decisions required approval of the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC. The Board lacked the authority and tools to act on its own and struggled to coordinate policies across districts. The governors and the Board understood the need for coordination; frequently corresponded concerning important issues; and established procedures and programs, such as the Open Market Investment Committee, to institutionalize cooperation. When these efforts yielded consensus, monetary policy could be swift and effective. But when the governors disagreed, districts could and sometimes did pursue independent and occasionally contradictory courses of action.

The governors disagreed on many issues, because at the time and for decades thereafter, experts disagreed about the best course of action and even about the correct conceptual framework for determining optimal policy. Information about the economy became available with long and variable lags. Experts within the Federal Reserve, in the business community, and among policymakers in Washington, DC, had different perceptions of events and advocated different solutions to problems. Researchers debated these issues for decades. Consensus emerged gradually. The views in this essay reflect conclusions expressed in the writings of three recent chairmen, Paul Volcke r, Alan Greenspan , and Ben Bernanke .

By “did it,” Bernanke meant that the leaders of the Federal Reserve implemented policies that they thought were in the public interest. Unintentionally, some of their decisions hurt the economy. Other policies that would have helped were not adopted.

An example of the former is the Fed’s decision to raise interest rates in 1928 and 1929. The Fed did this in an attempt to limit speculation in securities markets. This action slowed economic activity in the United States. Because the international gold standard linked interest rates and monetary policies among participating nations, the Fed’s actions triggered recessions in nations around the globe. The Fed repeated this mistake when responding to the international financial crisis in the fall of 1931. This website explores these issues in greater depth in our entries on the stock market crash of 1929 and the financial crises of 1931 through 1933 .

An example of the latter is the Fed’s failure to act as a lender of last resort during the banking panics that began in the fall of 1930 and ended with the banking holiday in the winter of 1933. This website explores this issue in essays on the banking panics of 1930 to 1931 , the banking acts of 1932 , and the banking holiday of 1933 .

One reason that Congress created the Federal Reserve, of course, was to act as a lender of last resort. Why did the Federal Reserve fail in this fundamental task? The Federal Reserve’s leaders disagreed about the best response to banking crises. Some governors subscribed to a doctrine similar to Bagehot’s dictum, which says that during financial panics, central banks should loan funds to solvent financial institutions beset by runs. Other governors subscribed to a doctrine known as real bills. This doctrine indicated that central banks should supply more funds to commercial banks during economic expansions, when individuals and firms demanded additional credit to finance production and commerce, and less during economic contractions, when demand for credit contracted. The real bills doctrine did not definitively describe what to do during banking panics, but many of its adherents considered panics to be symptoms of contractions, when central bank lending should contract. A few governors subscribed to an extreme version of the real bills doctrine labeled “liquidationist.” This doctrine indicated that during financial panics, central banks should stand aside so that troubled financial institutions would fail. This pruning of weak institutions would accelerate the evolution of a healthier economic system. Herbert Hoover’s secretary of treasury, Andrew Mellon, who served on the Federal Reserve Board, advocated this approach. These intellectual tensions and the Federal Reserve’s ineffective decision-making structure made it difficult, and at times impossible, for the Fed’s leaders to take effective action.

Among leaders of the Federal Reserve, differences of opinion also existed about whether to help and how much assistance to extend to financial institutions that did not belong to the Federal Reserve. Some leaders thought aid should only be extended to commercial banks that were members of the Federal Reserve System. Others thought member banks should receive assistance substantial enough to enable them to help their customers, including financial institutions that did not belong to the Federal Reserve, but the advisability and legality of this pass-through assistance was the subject of debate. Only a handful of leaders thought the Federal Reserve (or federal government) should directly aid commercial banks (or other financial institutions) that did not belong to the Federal Reserve. One advocate of widespread direct assistance was  Eugene Meyer , governor of the Federal Reserve Board, who was instrumental in the creation of the  Reconstruction Finance Corporation .

These differences of opinion contributed to the Federal Reserve’s most serious sin of omission: failure to stem the decline in the supply of money. From the fall of 1930 through the winter of 1933, the money supply fell by nearly 30 percent. The declining supply of funds reduced average prices by an equivalent amount. This deflation increased debt burdens; distorted economic decision-making; reduced consumption; increased unemployment; and forced banks, firms, and individuals into bankruptcy. The deflation stemmed from the collapse of the banking system, as explained in the essay on the  banking panics of 1930 and 1931 .

The Federal Reserve could have prevented deflation by preventing the collapse of the banking system or by counteracting the collapse with an expansion of the monetary base, but it failed to do so for several reasons. The economic collapse was unforeseen and unprecedented. Decision makers lacked effective mechanisms for determining what went wrong and lacked the authority to take actions sufficient to cure the economy. Some decision makers misinterpreted signals about the state of the economy, such as the nominal interest rate, because of their adherence to the real bills philosophy. Others deemed defending the gold standard by raising interests and reducing the supply of money and credit to be better for the economy than aiding ailing banks with the opposite actions.

On several occasions, the Federal Reserve did implement policies that modern monetary scholars believe could have stemmed the contraction. In the spring of 1931, the Federal Reserve began to expand the monetary base, but the expansion was insufficient to offset the deflationary effects of the banking crises. In the spring of 1932, after Congress provided the Federal Reserve with the necessary authority, the Federal Reserve expanded the monetary base aggressively. The policy appeared effective initially, but after a few months the Federal Reserve changed course. A series of political and international shocks hit the economy, and the contraction resumed. Overall, the Fed’s efforts to end the deflation and resuscitate the financial system, while well intentioned and based on the best available information, appear to have been too little and too late.

The flaws in the Federal Reserve’s structure became apparent during the initial years of the Great Depression. Congress responded by reforming the Federal Reserve and the entire financial system. Under the Hoover administration, congressional reforms culminated in the  Reconstruction Finance Corporation Act and the Banking Act of 1932 . Under the Roosevelt administration, reforms culminated in the  Emergency Banking Act of 1933 , the  Banking Act of 1933 (commonly called Glass-Steagall) , the  Gold Reserve Act of 1934 , and the  Banking Act of 1935 . This legislation shifted some of the Federal Reserve’s responsibilities to the Treasury Department and to new federal agencies such as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. These agencies dominated monetary and banking policy until the 1950s.

The reforms of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s turned the Federal Reserve into a modern central bank. The creation of the modern intellectual framework underlying economic policy took longer and continues today. The Fed’s combination of a well-designed central bank and an effective conceptual framework enabled Bernanke to state confidently that “we won’t do it again.”

• 1  These business cycle dates come from the National Bureau of Economic Research . Additional materials on the Federal Reserve can be found at the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Bibliography

Bernanke, Ben. Essays on the Great Depression . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.

Bernanke, Ben, “ On Milton Friedman's Ninetieth Birthday ," Remarks by Governor Ben S. Bernanke at the Conference to Honor Milton Friedman, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, November 8, 2002.

Chandler, Lester V. American Monetary Policy, 1928 to 1941 . New York: Harper and Row, 1971.

Chandler, Lester V. American’s Greatest Depression, 1929-1941 . New York: Harper Collins, 1970.

Eichengreen, Barry. “The Origins and Nature of the Great Slump Revisited.” Economic History Review 45, no. 2 (May 1992): 213–239.

Friedman, Milton and Anna Schwartz. A Monetary History of the United States: 1867-1960 . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963.

Kindleberger, Charles P. The World in Depression, 1929-1939 : Revised and Enlarged Edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

Meltzer, Allan. A History of the Federal Reserve: Volume 1, 1913 to 1951 . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Romer, Christina D. “The Nation in Depression.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 7, no. 2 (1993): 19-39.

Temin, Peter. Lessons from the Great Depression (Lionel Robbins Lectures) . Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989.

Written as of November 22, 2013. See disclaimer .

Essays in this Time Period

• Bank Holiday of 1933
• Banking Act of 1933 (Glass-Steagall)
• Banking Act of 1935
• Banking Acts of 1932
• Banking Panics of 1930-31
• Banking Panics of 1931-33
• Stock Market Crash of 1929
• Emergency Banking Act of 1933
• Gold Reserve Act of 1934
• Recession of 1937–38
• Roosevelt's Gold Program

Federal Reserve History

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Great Depression History

By: History.com Editors

Updated: October 20, 2023 | Original: October 29, 2009

The Great Depression was the worst economic crisis in modern history, lasting from 1929 until the beginning of World War II in 1939. The causes of the Great Depression included slowing consumer demand, mounting consumer debt, decreased industrial production and the rapid and reckless expansion of the U.S. stock market. When the stock market crashed in October 1929, it triggered a crisis in the international economy, which was linked via the gold standard. A rash of bank failures followed in 1930, and as the Dust Bowl increased the number of farm foreclosures, unemployment topped 20 percent by 1933. Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to stimulate the economy with a range of incentives including Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, but ultimately it took the manufacturing production increases of World War II to end the Great Depression.

What Caused the Great Depression?

Throughout the 1920s, the U.S. economy expanded rapidly, and the nation’s total wealth more than doubled between 1920 and 1929, a period dubbed “ the Roaring Twenties .”

The stock market, centered at the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street in New York City , was the scene of reckless speculation, where everyone from millionaire tycoons to cooks and janitors poured their savings into stocks. As a result, the stock market underwent rapid expansion, reaching its peak in August 1929.

By then, production had already declined and unemployment had risen, leaving stock prices much higher than their actual value. Additionally, wages at that time were low, consumer debt was proliferating, the agricultural sector of the economy was struggling due to drought and falling food prices and banks had an excess of large loans that could not be liquidated.

The American economy entered a mild recession during the summer of 1929, as consumer spending slowed and unsold goods began to pile up, which in turn slowed factory production. Nonetheless, stock prices continued to rise, and by the fall of that year had reached stratospheric levels that could not be justified by expected future earnings.

Stock Market Crash of 1929

On October 24, 1929, as nervous investors began selling overpriced shares en masse, the stock market crash that some had feared happened at last. A record 12.9 million shares were traded that day, known as “Black Thursday.”

Five days later, on October 29, or “Black Tuesday,” some 16 million shares were traded after another wave of panic swept Wall Street. Millions of shares ended up worthless, and those investors who had bought stocks “on margin” (with borrowed money) were wiped out completely.

As consumer confidence vanished in the wake of the stock market crash, the downturn in spending and investment led factories and other businesses to slow down production and begin firing their workers. For those who were lucky enough to remain employed, wages fell and buying power decreased.

Many Americans forced to buy on credit fell into debt, and the number of foreclosures and repossessions climbed steadily. The global adherence to the gold standard , which joined countries around the world in fixed currency exchange, helped spread economic woes from the United States throughout the world, especially in Europe.

Bank Runs and the Hoover Administration

Despite assurances from President Herbert Hoover and other leaders that the crisis would run its course, matters continued to get worse over the next three years. By 1930, 4 million Americans looking for work could not find it; that number had risen to 6 million in 1931.

Meanwhile, the country’s industrial production had dropped by half. Bread lines, soup kitchens and rising numbers of homeless people became more and more common in America’s towns and cities. Farmers couldn’t afford to harvest their crops and were forced to leave them rotting in the fields while people elsewhere starved. In 1930, severe droughts in the Southern Plains brought high winds and dust from Texas to Nebraska, killing people, livestock and crops. The “ Dust Bowl ” inspired a mass migration of people from farmland to cities in search of work.

In the fall of 1930, the first of four waves of banking panics began, as large numbers of investors lost confidence in the solvency of their banks and demanded deposits in cash, forcing banks to liquidate loans in order to supplement their insufficient cash reserves on hand.

Bank runs swept the United States again in the spring and fall of 1931 and the fall of 1932, and by early 1933 thousands of banks had closed their doors.

In the face of this dire situation, Hoover’s administration tried supporting failing banks and other institutions with government loans; the idea was that the banks in turn would loan to businesses, which would be able to hire back their employees.

FDR and the Great Depression

Hoover, a Republican who had formerly served as U.S. secretary of commerce, believed that government should not directly intervene in the economy and that it did not have the responsibility to create jobs or provide economic relief for its citizens.

In 1932, however, with the country mired in the depths of the Great Depression and some 15 million people unemployed, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt won an overwhelming victory in the presidential election.

By Inauguration Day (March 4, 1933), every U.S. state had ordered all remaining banks to close at the end of the fourth wave of banking panics, and the U.S. Treasury didn’t have enough cash to pay all government workers. Nonetheless, FDR (as he was known) projected a calm energy and optimism, famously declaring "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Roosevelt took immediate action to address the country’s economic woes, first announcing a four-day “bank holiday” during which all banks would close so that Congress could pass reform legislation and reopen those banks determined to be sound. He also began addressing the public directly over the radio in a series of talks, and these so-called “ fireside chats ” went a long way toward restoring public confidence.

During Roosevelt’s first 100 days in office, his administration passed legislation that aimed to stabilize industrial and agricultural production, create jobs and stimulate recovery.

In addition, Roosevelt sought to reform the financial system, creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation ( FDIC ) to protect depositors’ accounts and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to regulate the stock market and prevent abuses of the kind that led to the 1929 crash.

The New Deal: A Road to Recovery

Among the programs and institutions of the New Deal that aided in recovery from the Great Depression was the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) , which built dams and hydroelectric projects to control flooding and provide electric power to the impoverished Tennessee Valley region, and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) , a permanent jobs program that employed 8.5 million people from 1935 to 1943.

When the Great Depression began, the United States was the only industrialized country in the world without some form of unemployment insurance or social security. In 1935, Congress passed the Social Security Act , which for the first time provided Americans with unemployment, disability and pensions for old age.

After showing early signs of recovery beginning in the spring of 1933, the economy continued to improve throughout the next three years, during which real GDP (adjusted for inflation) grew at an average rate of 9 percent per year.

A sharp recession hit in 1937, caused in part by the Federal Reserve’s decision to increase its requirements for money in reserve. Though the economy began improving again in 1938, this second severe contraction reversed many of the gains in production and employment and prolonged the effects of the Great Depression through the end of the decade.

Depression-era hardships fueled the rise of extremist political movements in various European countries, most notably that of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime in Germany. German aggression led war to break out in Europe in 1939, and the WPA turned its attention to strengthening the military infrastructure of the United States, even as the country maintained its neutrality.

African Americans in the Great Depression

One-fifth of all Americans receiving federal relief during the Great Depression were Black, most in the rural South. But farm and domestic work, two major sectors in which Black workers were employed, were not included in the 1935 Social Security Act, meaning there was no safety net in times of uncertainty. Rather than fire domestic help, private employers could simply pay them less without legal repercussions. And those relief programs for which African Americans were eligible on paper were rife with discrimination in practice since all relief programs were administered locally.

Despite these obstacles, Roosevelt’s “Black Cabinet,” led by Mary McLeod Bethune , ensured nearly every New Deal agency had a Black advisor. The number of African Americans working in government tripled .

Women in the Great Depression

There was one group of Americans who actually gained jobs during the Great Depression: Women. From 1930 to 1940, the number of employed women in the United States rose 24 percent from 10.5 million to 13 million Though they’d been steadily entering the workforce for decades, the financial pressures of the Great Depression drove women to seek employment in ever greater numbers as male breadwinners lost their jobs. The 22 percent decline in marriage rates between 1929 and 1939 also created an increase in single women in search of employment.

Women during the Great Depression had a strong advocate in First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt , who lobbied her husband for more women in office—like Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins , the first woman to ever hold a cabinet position.

Jobs available to women paid less but were more stable during the banking crisis: nursing, teaching and domestic work. They were supplanted by an increase in secretarial roles in FDR’s rapidly-expanding government. But there was a catch: over 25 percent of the National Recovery Administration’s wage codes set lower wages for women, and jobs created under the WPA confined women to fields like sewing and nursing that paid less than roles reserved for men.

Married women faced an additional hurdle: By 1940, 26 states had placed restrictions known as marriage bars on their employment, as working wives were perceived as taking away jobs from able-bodied men—even if, in practice, they were occupying jobs men would not want and doing them for far less pay.

Great Depression Ends and World War II Begins

With Roosevelt’s decision to support Britain and France in the struggle against Germany and the other Axis Powers, defense manufacturing geared up, producing more and more private-sector jobs.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 led to America’s entry into World War II, and the nation’s factories went back into full production mode.

This expanding industrial production, as well as widespread conscription beginning in 1942, reduced the unemployment rate to below its pre-Depression level. The Great Depression had ended at last, and the United States turned its attention to the global conflict of World War II.

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Essays on the Great Depression

• Ben S. Bernanke

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Economics & Finance

From the Nobel Prize–winning economist and former chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, a landmark book that provides vital lessons for understanding financial crises and their sometimes-catastrophic economic effects

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As chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve during the Global Financial Crisis, Ben Bernanke helped avert a greater financial disaster than the Great Depression. And he did so by drawing directly on what he had learned from years of studying the causes of the economic catastrophe of the 1930s—work for which he was later awarded the Nobel Prize. This influential work is collected in Essays on the Great Depression , an important account of the origins of the Depression and the economic lessons it teaches.

"Bernanke certainly knows the importance of well-functioning markets. In Essays on the Great Depression he wrote persuasively that runs on the banks and extensive defaults on loans reduced the efficiency of the financial sector, prevented it from doing its normal job in allocating resources, and contributed to the Depression severity. The Depression-era problems he studied are mirrored by similar issues today, and they need urgent attention."—Robert J. Shiller, New York Times

"Bernanke probably knows more about the Depression of the 1930s, about specific events and economic interpretations, than any other living person."—Michael Barone, U.S. News & World Report

"Tempting as it is to focus on President Herbert Hoover and the 1929 U.S. market crash, Bernanke explores conditions across dozens of countries—assessing where banking crises erupted, how deeply economic activity plummeted and which central banks made the right calls."—Carlos Lozada, Washington Post

"Having devoted much of his career to studying the causes of the Great Depression, Bernanke was the academic expert on how to prevent financial crises from spinning out of control and threatening the general economy. One line from his Essays on the Great Depression sounds especially prescient today: 'To the extent that bank panics interfere with normal flows of credit, they may affect the performance of the real economy.'"—Roger Lowenstein, New York Times Magazine

"Fortunately, before he became entangled in these restrictions [Bernanke] did edit and help write a book, Essays on the Great Depression . . . . Bernanke's motive was that understanding the depression would provide important clues to what can go wrong with capitalist market systems."—Samuel Brittan, Financial Times

"The financial crisis has made Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's book Essays on the Great Depression a hot seller. . . . Bernanke, a former Princeton University economist, is considered the pre-eminent living scholar of the Great Depression. He is practicing today what he preached in his book: Flood the system with money to avoid a depression."—Dennis Cauchon, USA Today

"When Ben Bernanke arrived at the Federal Reserve in February 2006 as the new chairman of the central bank, he had a copy of his 2001 book, Inflation Targeting: Lessons from the International Experience , tucked under his arm. Not literally, of course. He was hoping to convince his colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee of the value of an explicit inflation target. Little did he know that less than two years later he'd be shelving Inflation Targeting and turning to Essays on the Great Depression , another of his books, for guidance. In his book of essays, Bernanke calls the Great Depression the 'Holy Grail of macroeconomics.' He writes that 'the experience of the 1930s continues to influence macroeconomists' beliefs, policy recommendations, and research agendas.'"—Caroline Baum, Bloomberg.com

"With some observers saying that the ongoing financial crisis could be the worst since the Great Depression, the greatest living expert on that period is getting the chance to apply its economic lessons. . . . In Essays on the Great Depression . . . [Bernanke] notes that understanding that period is the 'holy grail of macroeconomics.'"—Spencer Jakab, Dow Jones Newswires

"Bernanke is the master of applied microeconomics. Not only is he technically proficient but his ability to place his results in a larger macroeconomic context is unparalleled."—Mark Toma, Financial History Review

"This influential body of work is a significant contribution to our understanding the depth and persistence of the Great Depression. . . . This book will become a standard reference in the field of business cycle research."—Randall Kroszner, University of Chicago

"Bernanke's work has had a powerful impact on the economics profession, alerting macroeconomists to the advantages of historical analysis, and a number of important figures (James Hamilton, Steve Cecchetti, for example), inspired by his work, have followed him into the field. The nine essays form a remarkably coherent whole."—Barry Eichengreen, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System

"Collecting these essays together will provide a single source for students to find Bernanke's substantial contributions. . . . His papers demonstrate conclusively that the international view of the great depression has impressive explanatory power."—Peter Temin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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124 Great Depression Topics to Write about & Examples

Welcome to our list of the Great Depression topics! Here, you will find writing ideas about the causes and effects of the Great Depression. You can also pick plenty of related issues to debate.

🔝 Top 10 Great Depression Topics to Write About

🏆 best great depression topic ideas & essay examples, 💡 good great depression essay topics, ⭐ interesting topics to write about great depression, ❓ great depression essay questions, 🔎 great depression research topics.

• The Stock Market Crash of 1929
• What Triggered the Great Depression?
• Lessons Learned from the Great Depression
• The Dust Bowl Disaster and Its Role in the Depression
• How Banks Caused the Collapse of the Economy
• Government’s Response to the Great Depression
• The Great Depression and International Relations
• Unemployment and Poverty During the Depression
• Hardship and Resilience in Literature of the Great Depression
• The Impact of the Great Depression on Population Movements
• Cause and Effects of The Great Depression The economic devastation of the 1920s led to the Great Depression and brought a tragedy for the whole society. Crash of stock market The crash of the stock market in 1929 ushered in the Great […]
• The Reality of the Great Depression in Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” The journey of the Joad family and other significant characters in the story who played the roles in building the whole context take the path of meeting miserable economic situations.
• The Great Depression in Canada Before the onset of the Great Depression from the years 1919-1929, Canada had the fastest growing economy amongst the developing nations and the only blip to this record was the slight recession they suffered during […]
• The Impact of the Great Depression on Canada Some of the measures that Bennett put in place included camps to support the old and sick as well as the distribution of aid to the unemployed and disadvantaged in the country.
• How New Deal Represented Minorities and Ended the Great Depression The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration were some of the many programs representing minorities in the New Deal.
• John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” and the Great Depression The Grapes of Wrath begins by describing an occurrence of soil erosion in Dust Bowl Oklahoma that led to the destruction of crops, a decline in farming and farm produce and the migration of farmers […]
• Public Enemies During the Great Depression In the 1930’s most people in America were feeling the impact of the Great Depression due to the crashed economy. During the great depression, most people were facing the challenges of starving and losing their […]
• Gardens Role in Great Depression Although the main causes of the great depression are still vague and contentious to date, the overall outcome was unexpected and resulted in the universal loss of trust in the economic future.
• The Great Depression and Hoover’s Administration Therefore, it is probably fair to state that Hoover and his organization are not responsible for a large portion of what led to or failed to prevent the Great Depression.
• Great Depression: Annotated Bibliography This is a secondary source, written in 2020, and its main idea is that shocks of uncertainty had the main effect on the changes during the Great Depression, which contributed to the fall in production.
• President Hoover’s Role During the Great Depression Although a significant percentage of the causative constituents emanated from the previous government’s economic strategies, President Hoover elevated the conditional outlier.
• The Great Depression and the New Deal Politics In general, the New Deal politics aimed at alleviating the problems of the poor population and the unemployed Americans, returning the American economy to the norm, and the profound reformation of the financial system that […]
• Impact of the Great Depression and the New Deal on Minorities However, despite the intention to promote democracy and equality in the United States, the impact of the Great Depression was devastating, and the New Deal did not solve most problems among minorities.
• Social Work During the Great Depression and COVID-19 Pandemic Social workers during the COVID-19 pandemic were faced with a series of novice challenges similar to their counterparts in the Great Depression.
• The Great Depression: Prerequisites, Essence, and Consequences As a result of the crisis and the rise of protectionism, according to the League of Nations, world trade fell threefold from 1929 to 1933.
• The Concepts of Freedom and the Great Depression Furthermore, blacks were elected to construct the constitution, and black delegates fought for the rights of freedpeople and all Americans. African-Americans gained the freedom to vote, work, and be elected to government offices during Black […]
• Economic History of the US: The Great Depression The government’s immediate and unprecedented action brought the state out of the crisis and preserved the system of capitalism. In order to restore the security of Americans in the new deal, Congress and the President […]
• The Contribution of Former U.S. Presidents in Overcoming the Great Depression The Great Depression presents an event in which the U.S.developed progressive leadership policies to improve living standards. Modern politics in the U.S.has caused social divisions similar to the period of Unravelling.
• Great Depression and Cold War: Making of Modern America This paper will explore the causes of the Great Depression, the measures implemented within the New Deal, Cold War tensions, and the changes to the American society by the civil rights movement.
• American History: Great Depression and Other Issues One of the causes of the Great Depression was the international economic woes of the United States of America. One of the actions taken by the Hoover administration to combat the depression was urging the […]
• The History of Great Depression The Great Depression was the most severe recession of the past centuries. It affected the whole world and lasted for approximately 12 years.
• The Great Depression, Volatility and Employee Morale A?” The purpose of the present investigation study is to understand the morale of employees in corporate America on how it affects the way the economy functions in the United States.
• Stories From the Great Depression: President Roosevelt At the same time, the era of the Great Depression was the time when many Americans resorted to their wit and creativity.
• Gender, Family, and Unemployment in Ontario’s Great Depression The introduction and all the background that Campbell gives are firmly in line with the goals of this course. The first part of the study is the business and the economic history.
• How Did the Great Depression Affect Americans? The Great Depression can be fairly supposed to have been the harshest time in the history of the United States after The Civil War.
• The Causes of the Great Depression: Black Tuesday and Panic Historians relate the end of the great depression to the start of the second-word war. The government then came up with packages that sought to lessen the effects of the depression.
• The Actions of the Roosevelt on Great Depression S president and his efforts to save the country from the effects of the great depression were futile. The deal consisted of recovery programs which were targeted to be initiated into the economy in the […]
• The Great Depression of 1929 This was the program that opened the eyes of the people to the fact that the depression era did not affect just the low bracket of society and that if they were to overcome it, […]
• The Great Depression in the United States’ History This great depression was considered as the major reason of the war and in the initial stages the world was ignorant about the disasters of the war.
• The Great Depression Period Analysis The main causes for the Great Depression were a combination of unequally distributed wealth, the stock market crash, and eventually the bank failures.
• Great Depression and the American People’s Relationship With Their Government In this essay, I will try to trace the effects of the depression not just on the people who lived it but also among the present Americans.
• How the Great Depression Changed Americans During the depression, the population experienced intense pain and extensive misery and the event has been blamed for leading to calamities such as World War II and the rising to power of Adolf Hitler.
• America in 1920s: Great Depression Regarding the issue of credit exploration in the 1920s, and the contribution of the credit’s expansion into the process of onset of the Great Depression, it is necessary to refer to the facts from American […]
• History of the Great Depression and the New Deal According to the prominent American economist John Keyne, the main cause of the Great Depression was the shortage of money supply, which was dependant on the gold reserve, in the meantime, the industry output significantly […]
• Great Depression of Canada and Conscription During World War I in Canada Due to the depression in the United States, the people across the border were not able to buy the wheat produced and cultivated in Canada and as a result, the exports declined.
• The Great Depression in Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” The family adjusted to the codes of conduct in the camp, and Tom even managed to find a job picking fruits at a local farm.
• The Great Depression: Time of Crisis in America This was a time of immeasurable economic instability, and as many of us have read, the depression started with the atrocious crash of the stock market in 1929.
• Presidential Policy During the Great Depression During the early part of the Great Depression, the economy had ground to a halt as a result of the stock market crashing and the unemployment rates skyrocketed as businesses shut down.
• Great Depression in “A Worn Path” by Eudora Welty The first few paragraphs of the story are dedicated specifically to painting the image of the old Afro-American woman in the mind of the reader by providing details on her appearance, closing, her manners of […]
• “The Great Depression: 1929-1939” Documentary Despite the promises given by the President and the leaders of finance, the situation did not improve. The narrator remarks that people were losing hope, and no one knew how to improve the situation.
• Great Depression in the United States The Great Depression of the 1930’s is the most significant economic crises in the history of the modern world and the United States, in particular.
• American Great Depression and New Deal Reforms What is definitely certain is that many factors like the shifting of the economy, unstable credit and financial system, poor government decisions, and the fact that the international economy was still recovering from ruinous effects […]
• Great Depression’ History: Causes and Regulations The Great Depression that happened in the 1930s was the gravest and prolonged economic downturn in the history of the developed Western world.
• Child Labor, Great Depression and World War II in Photographs The impression is of isolation and yearning for daylight, freedom, and a childhood foregone, in the midst of a machine-dominated world.
• The Great Depression in the US and Its Causes It was believed at the time that even if a person failed to pay back their loan, the seizure of assets to cover the cost of the loan in the form of stocks would have […]
• Women’s Rights in the Great Depression Period The pursuit of the workplace equality and the protection of women from unfair treatment by the employers were quite unsuccessful and slow due to the major division in the opinions.
• Great Depression – American History However, though the thicket of sarcasm and irony, one can see despair and disbelief in the power of art, as well as the doubt if art can actually be produced under the name of Hollywood: […]
• The Great Depression and the New Deal Phenomenon With time, due to the highly unequal distribution of income, as well as to the depression in farming regions, the buying capacity of Americans decreased significantly; this led to the inability to purchase the goods […]
• The Great Depression in Amercia Form the war in Japan to the Vietnamese war, and many other political modifications, these changes destined to cross over into the 1970s and 1980s.
• Roosevelt’s Plan to End the Great Depression When he assumed the presidency in 1932, Franklin acknowledged the challenges of the nation, and also the way to get them out of the great depression.
• Lessons From the Great Depression and Postwar Global Economy: A Critical Analysis The economic slump that hit industrialized economies of the world, starting in the U.S.and later spreading to Europe, began in earnest in 1929 and lasted until about 1941, making it the longest and most ruthless […]
• Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Plans to End the Great Depression in His Presidency President Franklin Roosevelt rose to power at the time when the U.S.was facing hardships in the economy with the great depression badly affecting the economic activities of the country.
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Plans to Combat the Great Depression He came to power in 1933 when the United States was in the middle of the Great Depression, and left in 1945 when the world, including the USA, was grappling with the effects of the […]
• US’s Economic Recovery in the Aftermath of the Great Depression The efforts to US’s economic recovery in the aftermath of the Great Depression of the 1930s sparked a series of economic programs under an umbrella name, the ‘New Deal.’ The mission of the ‘New Deal’ […]
• Causes of Great Depression: Canada Great Depression Causes of great depression The fundamental causes of great depression in Canada were the decline in the spending. Crash in the stock market in the United State and Canada contributed to the great depression.
• Is the U.S. Headed Towards the Second Great Depression? This is one of the indicators economists observe to foresee the possibility of the economy diving in to a recession, or is already on the way to recession.
• Repercussion of Great Depression The US mortgage crisis that was the genesis of the financial crisis is blamed on the laxity of law enforcers or failure of the laws that have governed the financial market in the US.
• Why the Great Depression Occurred – a Public Budgeting Stand Point As observed by Romer, “the great depression took place in the late 1920s to the late 1930s and was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced in the industrialized Western world”.
• The Great Depression: A Diary The book covers very little on the normal lifestyle of the people in Youngstown before the crisis; all that it documents are the hardships that describe Ohio as a hopeless place to live.
• The Great Depression’ Influence on the World His book looks at the factors that have caused and prolonged the issues that have deprived many people of jobs and ability to come out of the atrocious conditions.
• In the Eye of the Great Depression It led to the formation of groupings in society due to their similarities in their plight to restore dignity and compassion to their lives.
• Causes of the Great Depression This was due to a prediction of the end of rise in the stock market thus; there was a nationwide stampede to unload the stocks.
• The Great Depression and the New Deal The Great Depression of 1929-40s refers to the collapse of the world economy. For instance, a democrat entitled as Glass believed in the dominance of the white, budget devoid of deficits, the statutory rights, as […]
• Monetary and Fiscal Policy during the Great Depression An expansionary monetary policy is any action by the Fed that results in an increase to the total output or aggregate demand in an economy.
• Economic Depression in USA The Depression of 1873-1879 This depression was as a result of the bankruptcy of the railroad investment firm of Jay Cooke and company and particularly the restrictive monetary policy of the federal government; this is […]
• The Actual Causes of the Great Depression In the period between the end of First World War and the onset of the great depression, United States enjoyed relatively stable economic conditions under the leadership of a string of republican presidents.
• Government Policy Interventions and the Great Depression Monetary policy is the process where the government intervenes by administering and controlling the amount of money in the economy using the Central Bank in many countries and the Federal Reserve in the United States.
• Problem of USA Exposed by the Great Depression The recession was triggered by various fiscal features such as the vast margin between the poor and the wealthy, government debts and surplus production of commodities only to mention a few.
• The Great Depression Effects on American Economy The main problem behind the stated Great Depression experienced in the United States in 1929 was the mismatch between the consuming capacity of the population of the United States and the production capacity of the […]
• Great Depression as a Worldwide Economic Decline Many people ceased to buy products leading to low production of the products. This led to lose of market for American industries and led to trade disagreements among nations.
• The Great Depression Crisis Other causes that led to a reduction in aggregate demand followed throughout the depression period and the effects were transmitted from the United States which was in essence the ‘epicenter’ of the depression to the […]
• The Great Depression in Latin America Leaders in Latin America acknowledged the need to change economic policies and promoted the discarding of the free-market model in favor of import substitution.
• The Causal-Effect Connection of the Great Depression According to majority of the authors and scholars, The Great Depression is the worst economic downturn in the history of the United States of America.
• The Three Main Causes of Great Depression This paper sheds light on the causes that led to the great depression in America According to Bordo and White, the great depression begun in 1929 and many people suffered because all the businesses had […]
• Did Bank Distress Stifle Innovation During the Great Depression?
• How Does “The Cinderella Man” Depict Life During the Great Depression?
• Could the FED Have Prevented the Great Depression?
• How Did the Great Depression Affect a Generation?
• Did American Welfare Capitalists Breach Their Implicit Contracts During the Great Depression?
• How Does the Great Depression Affect the World Economy?
• Could the Great Depression Be Describes a Time of Desperation?
• How Did the Great Depression Pave the Road for Hitler?
• Did France Cause the Great Depression?
• How Did Demographics Cause the Great Depression?
• Did Hayek and Robbins Deepen the Great Depression?
• How Did Black People Face the Great Depression Differently?
• Did International Economic Forces Cause the Great Depression?
• How Did Governments Deal With Problems Caused by the Great Depression?
• Did Korekiyo Takahashi Rescue Japan From the Great Depression?
• How Did Great Britain, France, and the United States Respond to the Great Depression?
• Did Monetary Forces Cause the Great Depression?
• How Did the Great Depression Completely Destroy America?
• Did Sunspot Forces Cause the Great Depression?
• How Did WWII End the Great Depression?
• Did Technology Shocks Drive the Great Depression?
• How Does the Current Global Economic Recession Compare to the Great Depression?
• Did the Canadian Government Do Enough During the Great Depression?
• How Franklin Delano Roosevelt Handled the Great Depression in the U.S.?
• Did the Commercial Paper Funding Facility Prevent a Great Depression Style Money Market Meltdown?
• How Great Was the Great Depression?
• Did the Great Depression Affect Educational Attainment in the US?
• How Has Homelessness Changed Since the Great Depression?
• Did the New Deal Prolong or Worsen the Great Depression?
• How Did Income Inequality Lead to the Great Depression?
• The Agricultural Crisis During the Great Depression
• Government Relief Programs of the Depression Era
• How the Great Depression Impacted Minority Communities
• The Political Consequences of the Stock Market Crash
• Hoover vs. Roosevelt’s Approaches to Economic Recovery
• The Psychological Effects of the Great Depression on People and Families
• The Role of Government in Economic Recovery during the Great Depression
• The Legacy of Labor Unions and Workers’ Rights of the Depression Era
• Gender Roles, Employment, and Social Changes During the Depression Era
• The Legacy of the Great Depression as Seen in the Modern Economic Policy
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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The Great Depression - List of Essay Samples And Topic Ideas

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place during the 1930s, profoundly affecting many countries. Essays on the Great Depression could explore its causes, such as the stock market crash of 1929, its impact on people’s lives, and the political and social repercussions. Moreover, discussions might extend to the measures taken to alleviate the depression and the lessons learned in economic policy and financial regulation, comparing it to other economic downturns. We have collected a large number of free essay examples about The Great Depression you can find at PapersOwl Website. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

Why was Herbert Hoover Blamed for the Great Depression?

President Herbert Hoover is often blamed for the great depression for many reasons, he had ideas put into place that were meant to aid the problems in the economy but hurt it instead. Pro-labour policies made by President Hoover after the stock market crash of 1929 caused the majority of the nation's gross domestic product to decline over the next two years. This made what could have been a bad recession turn into the Great Depression. There were many reasons […]

How the Great Depression Affected African Americans

In the 1920s, African Americans were looked upon as lower class individuals and as a result, had very low paying jobs. Now, just imagine an economic crisis in such a situation. It will be chaotic. Unfortunately, an economic crisis did hit, and many African Americans lost their jobs, to leave the jobs for the white Americans. This economic crisis, plus the racial inequality African Americans faced caused a great depression amongst African Americans, which affected them till 1960. During this […]

Great Depression Vs. Great Recession

Both the Great Depression and the Great Recession were major events that have occurred in the United States economy that have had lasting effects on the country and other countries around the world. But these events were necessarily good ones. They were two of the greatest crises in American economic history. The Great Depression was first, occurring from 1929 to1939. The Great Recession happened many decades in the future, starting in late 2007 and ending in early 2010. Comparison of […]

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What was the Great Depression?

The Great Depression was a dramatic shift in the US economy leaving people homeless and people didn't have a way to make a living. .This made the government create new programs called the New Deal it however failed to stop the Great Depression and these programs wasted a lot of money..The Great Depression started in 1929 it was the biggest economic downfall in US History it left a lot people without jobs and banks started going out of business all […]

Causes of the Great Depression (1929-1939)

During the Great Depression, Franklin D.Roosevelt stated, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." As World War I ended and the 1920's boom in the industry deteriorated, the Great Depression developed and the result was dreadful. The crash affected millions of people and lasted for about a decade. United States was in a state of despair, as banking systems failed, many people were unemployed, and prices drastically fell. War-producing factories shut down, farms/homes were lost to possession […]

Hitler’s Rise to Power in History

After Germany’s defeat in World War 1, the powerful countries of, the United States, Great Britain, France and other allies created the Treaty of Versailles, which forced hard terms on Germany. Being under the risk of invasion, Germany had no choice but to sign the treaty, taking full responsibility for the war and accepting the terms which included, large reparations, limited military, and giving up territory to neighboring countries. Restrictions would lead Germany into an economic crisis that would only […]

Effects of the Great Depression on Life of Americans

The Great Depression is a major event in American history impacted the lives of many Americans and others around the World. Following World War I, the Great Depression brought pain, confusion, and suffering to a countless amount of Americans lives. Any hope Americans had at the time was lost because of this tragic event. Unfortunately, all workers at this time no longer could feel comfortable with the economy around them. Essentially, the economy was ruined and created chaos across America. […]

What Ended the Great Depression?

The Great Depression had a devastating impact on the nation, spreading across the countryside and bringing hardship to big cities and small towns. No social, racial, or economic class was excluded. At the depth of the depression, in 1933: 13 million people were unemployed, 50% percent of the banks had foreclosed, national income fell by 42% and one million people were homeless. There were multiple reasons the depression occurred. The series of factors that caused this event were the 1929 […]

The Aftermath and Effects of World War II on the United States

Despite the overall ending of World War II, the effects of the war brought both positive and negative changes to the United States. These changes included different economic, political, and social aspects that transformed America into all that it is today, and whether or not these changes where positive or negative, both are truly important to the history of the United States of America. According to the textbook, some of the positive changes that World War II brought to the […]

Government Response to the Great Depression

Black Tuesday was the start of the depression. Also, Herbert Hoover did not want to give the people federal money. He thought they had to get themselves out of the problem. This made many people go homeless and plus the Dust Bowl which also destroyed people's homes. The Great Depression was defined as a dark age in the 1930's. Although, there are causes that made the Great Depression happen, like the farm industry failing, low income families, and lastly World […]

What was the Great Depression and why did it Start in the USA

There are many significant events that have shaped America’s history. Some were infamous, some scandalous and some we choose to overlook..According to the PBS film “The Great Depression”, The Great Depression was one of the most traumatic and gut wrenching event throughout history. This film outline the events leading up to the great depression and highlights some of the significant events during this time period. The Great Depression was an economic downturn that began in 1929 while president Herbert Hoover […]

Great Depression: what Happened, Causes, how it Ended

During the 1930s. America went through one of the worst economic declines in world history, The Great Depression. Many believe it was sole because of the stock market crash, however other factors played a huge role in causing the Great Depression to occur. Bank failures, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff in the 1930s, and weather conditions from the Dust Bowl all played a critical factor in influencing this economic depression within America. Throughout America's history, much examination has been placed in the […]

The Great Depression and John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck is one of Americans best selling author. Steinbeck has wrote over 25 books throughout his writing career. Steinbeck traveled around the world to get ideas for his books. He mainly wrote about what it was like to live in the Great Depression and about American life in the 20’s. He wrote about his personal life and the life around him during the Dust Bowl and one of the worst times in American history. The Great Depression started right […]

Unemployment during the Great Depression

The stock market crash all started on black tuesday on october 24, 1929. During Black Tuesday 16,410,030 shares on the New York stock were traded in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors. Tons of machines controlling the trades were shut down due to the tremendous amounts of share trades. Due to Black Tuesday, America as well as the industrial world to spiral down into what is known as the Great Depression. After this […]

Male Workers during the Great Depression

When the crisis broke out in 1929 the men's labor movement does not have solid organizations that allow it to react quickly to the effects of the financial crack and pay the consequences. It will be from 1933 that the lethargy of the male working class breaks down and a stage of great strikes and struggles begins. This resuscitation coincides, in part, with the sanction of the National Recovery Act. It contained a clause that recognized male workers' right to […]

Economic Recovery in the Great Depression

The Nineteen Twenties proved to be a great decade for America. The end of the Great War marked the end of many world powers and weakened many other countries. However, amidst of this chaos, the stage was set for America to become a superpower and prosper greatly throughout the decade"just to break down and enter a longest-lasting economic downturn the country has ever seen. This would affect the lives of a lot of people as unemployment, suicide rates and death […]

Great Depression: Causes and Definition

The Great Depression was the worst economic problem in the history of the world, from 1929 to 1939. It caused many problem and difficulty like, Overproduction, Big crash, weak banking systems, and buying on margins. The Great Depression made everyone forget about the wealth, growth and prosperity of last period of ten years and face new economically unfair conditions of business and living in a bad situation. The government should’ve involve more in the Great Depression to help people and […]

Causes of the Great Depression and the Lasting Impacts

Abstract This paper discusses the causes of the Great Depression and the lasting impacts it had on the U.S. Many people attribute the sole cause of the Great of Depression to the stock market crash of 1929 but there are actually multiple contributing factor. The stock market crash propelled the Great Depression forward but many other causes contributed to the length and depth. Keywords: Great Depression, Stock Market The 1920's were a time of low unemployment, mass production of goods, […]

Roosevelt, the Great Depression, and the Economics of Recovery

The Great Depression hit America like a whirlwind during the 1930'. It hit with a force like no other. Its' impact was nothing short of devastating in all aspects of American life. This was a time of extreme poverty, unemployment, homelessness and overall social unrest. Every American in every town and city was greatly impacted by the crash of the stock market which in turn led to a complete nose dive of the economy. This prompted an increased number of […]

The History of the Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression starting in 1929 ending in 1941. The Great Depression started with numerous types of things. The economic conditions that led to the Great Depression began in the early 1920s, this was said by, Jennifer Croft in her article called, "Facts About The Great Depression." It started by the crash of stock markets, drought (The Dust Bowl), overproduction of goods, bank failures, Stock speculation, and consumer debt. After this lasting for about […]

Effects the Great Depression on African Americans

From the economic crisis in the 1930s to now, our country has developed greatly in medicine, technology, art, military weapons, and laws. However, since then prejudices are still apparent and people’s mindsets have stayed relatively the same from those of 100 years ago and are not open-minded like the development of medicine and weapons. The Great Depression impacted African Americans immensely in comparison to the white working class and farmers. Middle and lower class women being paid less compared to […]

Great Depression in the United States

The Great depression was a time when America could not see the future and felt doubtful about the future to come. This was the worst economic downfall in the history of the United States. The Depression started in 1929 and happened to end in the end of 1930. More than a third of the nation's banks had failed and this caused the major stock market to come crashing down. The Great Depression was horrifying for many Americans because of its […]

Gender Roles during the Great Depression and the Cold War

A role or behavior learned by a person as appropriate to their gender which is determined by the prevailing cultural norms is called a gender role. Both men and women have been told how to behave, dress, and even present themselves to the public. An example of gender roles in society is women are supposed to be feminine, graceful, polite, nurturing, emotional, take care of kids, cook, clean; while men are supposed to be muscular, aggressive, tall, take care of […]

How could the Great Depression been Pre Tive

The Great Depression started in 1929 and lasted through 1939, where over a short period of time drastic changes occurred not just to the United States but also other countries that were involved in the United Nations. Even though the economy suffered, unemployment increased and the stock market fell this could have been prevented looking back at it now. The start of the Depression was caused by the engagement of the government decision over the nation's economy and also the […]

Argentina and the Great Depression

From 1860 to 1930, Argentina was viewed as one of the wealthiest nations on the planet. Argentina had an enormous residential which shaped a ton of speculations and enabled the economy to be modernized with the advancement of nearby industries. During this time, Argentina's economy was firmly tied with the British economy in view of Argentina fares and imports of fine yields. A portion of their enterprises was; sustenance preparing, meat pressing, flour processing, and calfskin tanning everything that helped […]

The Economy of the Great Depression

The United States has faced quite a few depressions every 20 or so years. At the end of the 1920’s the United States had a thriving economy until the Great Depression hit in 1929. The Great Depression was the most severe and longest ever experienced by the industrialized western world. This depression occurred between 1929 and 1939 resulting from a time of major economic decline, bank failures, reduction in purchasing, and the drought conditions. Before the depression, profits for businesses […]

America’s Great Depression and Roosevelt’s New Deal

The Great Depression led to one of the greatest economic downfalls in United States history and some of the economic causes that led to the Great Depression included bank failures, the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and the Dust Bowl. A total of 56,670 banks failed from the years 1930-1932. The number of bank failures decreased as the years went on. Most of these banks were smaller side (Chapter 21). During this time, customers lost most if not all of […]

The Causes of the Great Depression

Imagine losing all your money in a blink of an eye after it being flowing into your pocket rapidly in the last period and then you either have to depend on others or sell what you have and stand in long lines for food. This is what happened to average families during the greatest economic downturn in the history of the U.S. Before the great depression the U.S was advancing exponentially during what was called the Roaring Twenties(Ellen Parson,2002). The […]

Herbert Hoover’s Presidency: Navigating through the Storm of the Great Depression

Herbert Hoover, the 31st President of the United States, often finds himself eclipsed by the significant impact of the Great Depression. The current era of unparalleled economic upheaval has significantly influenced the course of history. Herbert Hoover, a professional engineer and successful entrepreneur, became the presidency in 1929 during the economic turmoil that plagued the United States. The scholarly community has engaged in extensive historical discourse over his reaction to the Great Depression. A comprehensive comprehension of Hoover's actions necessitates […]

How did the Great Depression Lead to WW2

Imagine a world gripped by economic despair, where hope seems like a distant dream and the common man struggles to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The 1920s, often glamorized as the age of jazz and prosperity, suddenly gave way to the harsh realities of the 1930s: The Great Depression. As families across the globe grappled with unemployment and hunger, a more sinister wave was taking shape in the form of political upheavals and rising dictatorships. But […]

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How To Write an Essay About The Great Depression

Understanding the great depression.

Before starting an essay on the Great Depression, it is essential to have a comprehensive understanding of this significant historical event. The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic downturn that took place during the 1930s. It began after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into panic and wiped out millions of investors. The depression had devastating effects in countries both rich and poor. Begin your essay by outlining the key events that led to the Great Depression, including the stock market crash, bank failures, and reduction in purchasing across the board. Additionally, discuss the global impact of the depression, as it was not limited to the United States but affected economies worldwide.

Developing a Thesis Statement

A strong essay on the Great Depression should be centered around a clear, concise thesis statement. This statement should present a specific viewpoint or argument about the Great Depression. For instance, you might analyze the causes of the Great Depression, its impact on a particular sector of society, or the effectiveness of the responses by governments. Your thesis will guide the direction of your essay and ensure a structured and coherent analysis.

Gathering Historical Evidence

To support your thesis, gather historical evidence from credible sources. This may include economic data, personal accounts, government policies, and historical analyses. For example, if discussing the impact on agriculture, you might use statistics about farm foreclosures or personal narratives from farmers. Analyze this evidence critically, considering the context and the source's reliability.

Analyzing the Impact of The Great Depression

Dedicate a section of your essay to analyzing the impact of the Great Depression. Discuss the widespread unemployment, the collapse of financial institutions, and the human toll it took on society. Consider the long-term effects, such as changes in government policy, shifts in economic theory, and how it shaped subsequent generations' attitudes toward money and banking.

Concluding the Essay

Conclude your essay by summarizing the main points of your discussion and restating your thesis in light of the evidence presented. Your conclusion should tie together your analysis and emphasize the significance of understanding the Great Depression in the context of both historical and modern economic understanding. You might also want to reflect on the lessons learned from the Great Depression and their relevance to contemporary economic challenges.

Reviewing and Refining Your Essay

After completing your essay, take the time to review and refine it. Ensure that your arguments are clearly articulated and supported by evidence. Check for grammatical accuracy and ensure that your essay flows logically from one point to the next. Consider seeking feedback from peers, teachers, or historians to further refine your essay. A well-written essay on the Great Depression will not only demonstrate your understanding of this pivotal period in history but also your ability to engage critically with economic and historical narratives.

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Essay On The Great Depression

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: United States , Business , Great Depression , Social Issues , Poverty , Banking , Money , Economics

Words: 1600

Published: 12/13/2019

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Introduction

Great Depression has been an unforgettable historical event that led the people of America to experience a big hole of nightmarish misery and poverty. It has been one of the most significant economic events that highlights the 20th century, as foretold by Graham, J. R. Banks had been closed, stock markets had been crashed that later inflicted the significant loss of people’s savings and money—their primary way of survival. From a single, big blow in the economy, a wide-range of variables were greatly affected, leading to a massive recession of economy that later arose into depression throughout the land. This single, big blow in the economy, which was the root cause of this tragic economic event, was actually the decline of the primary supplies of the people brought about by the war, thus later result to severe and complicated poverty in the country. An immeasurable and countless reasons had brought out this unsightly incident that no one could even imagine and dream about. Looking back through the history of Great Depression, following World War I, people experienced massive damages. According to Robert, J. (2012), it’s about an ‘American Story with global side effects’, such that America acts as the primary banker of the world during those times.

The Great Depression

Considering those times when prices are greatly increased during the war, Britain was heavily affected and weakened, thus having difficulty in stabilizing the economy of the World. Europe avoided to pay loans and to buy products from America. They couldn’t perform the task to keep their market open and available so those trades among countries can maintain a stable exchange rate. The trouble that lies in here is that there are so many countries that were no longer able to avail and afford the costly welfare expenses that they have (Robert, J., 2012). There were even cases where some nations had already over-borrowed resources, which is why those who had not yet experienced it avoid that same fate. This heavily affected the trade. There were imbalances. Improper and faulty strategic, economic ideas people had believed and trusted follows. Stock Market speculation was one of these, leading to stock market crash. People lost almost everything they have because of this. Most notable stock market crash is on 1929. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped almost 40 per cent (from 327 to 199) that spans from October 23 to November 13. This happened when everyone was igniting to own and have part of the stock market, but the matter is, they lack the money to be able to do so. So what they did was to borrow money, and bought tremendously overpriced stock, that in actuality, worth nothing at all. In the end they lost their money. But not only them! The people who they borrowed the money from also incurred a loss, since they we’re not being paid back. During those times debts had been written in amounts of fixed dollar, which is why deflation (falling prices, wages, profits) made it much harder for people like the farmers, the businessmen, and households to repay loans. American Farms were soon devastated financially. Farmers were not able to make any money from their crops and products. They were even losing more than $1.50 per acre of land they planted. According to Robert, J. (2009), from 1929 to 1933, the prices for wheat, corn, and other products from the farm plummeted to 54 per cent; and those for building materials even fell at 25 per cent. Considering that there were giant dust storms that added to the destruction of their fields, farmers were left with no choice but to lose their farms with no money at all. Increasing taxes also seemed to be of no significant effect in combatting the increasing debts of the people. In the study of Graham, J. R., they suggest that either changes nor regulations in tax policy that were designed to limit debt biases in the land, there were only but little effect on the usage and solvency of debt. When almost all the investors had been unable to pay their debts to the banks, the banks, in turn, lost all of its money as a consequence. Everyone came to retrieve and withdraw their cash from their respective banks. The problem is, the banks don’t have enough money available to entertain those withdrawals anymore. In the study conducted by Robert, J. (2012) he cited that Friedman and Schwartz claimed that it is the Federal Reserve failed to rescue and revive the banking system. From 1929 to 1933, almost 24,970 banks (more than two-fifths of the nations) disappeared because of failure or because of merger. The bank deposits and the circulation of currency, which are basically the money supply of the nation dropped by a third. What is ironical about it is that the very purpose why the congress was created is to backstop the banking system of the land in 1913. Economics is soon trickled down. Trickled-down economics comes from the idea that, as you give more money to the wealthy and rich people, more money would also be brought to the poor people, since rich people would establish a company that would hire those poor people and work for them. However, a bad turn of events happened, when what actually occurred is that, instead of hiring men, these wealthy proprietors and business men bought machines to do the work for them. Thus, this strategy was a big failure. There was also overproduction of supplies that happened, thanks to the companies which bought so many equipment to make things go faster and so that they could do mass production of goods. Now, instead of hiring laborers for the job, too many products had been made. Too many products became classified as surplus, since there are no enough people to buy all of the goods produced. Although they can already fast operations, it’s just that there were not enough people to consume their products, losing their hard-earned money in the process. All that they had spent for their products were put to waste. A seemingly domino-effect then had happened. Just from these things, dreadful effects followed as consequences: people became unemployed. From 1930 to 1939, the U.S. unemployment rate averaged 14 per cent; the peak rate, in 1932, was 23 per cent (Robert J, 2012). The longest period of unemployment in America was noted to last for 19 months as seen in the early 1980’s. Other places in the world also suffered from having the same fate—unemployment issues. Unemployment among industrial workers in United Kingdom had even reached up to 21 per a year earlier. In Germany, it even hit up to 44 per cent. As bad as how it looked, the Congress did not even consider federal unemployment insurance only until 1935 (Robert, J., 2012) As people became unemployed, massive poverty began to spread in the land. 34 million people, who has no source of income due to being unemployed, became really poor, that was almost more than 60% of people during those time that were officially considered and rendered as to living in poverty. Poverty led to homelessness. With no jobs and source of a living, almost two million people who basically have no home and walked almost everywhere looking for work. The towns start to put up signs signifying and telling these people to go away and don’t come near their place. These people with no home to live in are not only adults-- children were also a part of them. The great depression in America (started and dated in the late 1929) finally ended on the eve of World War II. The very reason it ended was the creation of new jobs needed for the building of weapons that the soldiers might need for their fights. At the end of World War II, the United States of America became the world’s most powerful country because of the creation of the nuclear missiles.

The Great Depression indeed was a living nightmare to all the people. But to think more about it, the great depression was actually a result and consequence of the greed and desire of people. A single war would turn out to be the destruction of the supplies; with which would later result to the inability of the country to maintain proper balance in trade and industry in economics. As foretold by Robert, J. (2012), “The Depression couldn't end until people changed their beliefs and behavior--a lengthy and tortuous process, because people cling to what's familiar”. Still giving off their pride and greed to bring things more fortunate in their way, they ended up being in poverty. Reckless ways of handling their situations, and continuing their belief to uphold the money that they initially think can help them rise from the ground, they eventually failed. Although fortunately, America was able to rise up, the key to all of it is to analyze things two steps ahead. People should start to think what the consequences of their actions should be.

Works Cited

Graham, J. R. et al (2011) Financial Distress in the Great Depression. Samuelson, R. J. et al (2012) Revisiting the Great Depression.

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The Great Depression Essay

The students learn about the events that led to the stock market crash, the concerns of the Depression, and the effects of the New Deal programs on the American people and the American economy. While reading and discussing these important issues in American History, the students choose an original Depression photograph [primary source] and create a story using historical facts. The project is one week in duration. A scoring guide and handout are utilized.

1. The student will conduct research using primary and secondary sources. 2. The student will write an essay using the provided format and criteria. 3. The student will present his/her work to class an an oral presentation.

Missouri Standards

Goal 1.2 Conduct research to answer questions and evaluate information and ideas. Goal 1.4 Use technological tools and other resources to locate, select, and organize information. Goal 2.1 Plan and make written, oral and visual presentations for a variety of purposes and audiences.

Kansas Standards

Benchmark 2: The student uses a working knowledge and understanding of individuals, groups, ideas, developments, and turning points in the era of the Great Depression through World War II in United States history (1930-1945).

The student:

1. (A) analyzes the causes and impact of the Great Depression (e.g., overproduction, consumer debt, banking regulation, unequal distribution of wealth).

2. (A) analyzes the costs and benefits of New Deal programs. (e.g., budget deficits vs. creating employment, expanding government: CCC, WPA, Social Security, TVA, community infrastructure improved, dependence on subsides).

3. (A) analyzes the debate over expansion of federal government programs during the Depression (e.g., Herbert Hoover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Alf Landon, Huey Long, Father Charles Coughlin).

Benchmark 3: The student writes technical text using the writing process.

1. Develops a technical text focused on one main purpose. (Ideas and Content: prewriting, drafting, revising: N,E,T,P)

2. Clearly defines the main idea with selection of concise, logical details that meet the reader’s informational needs. (Ideas and Content: prewriting, drafting, revising: N,E,T,P)

3. Analyzes and understands implications and consequences of plagiarism (e.g. ethical, legal, professional). (Ideas and Content: prewriting, drafting, revising: N,E,T,P)

4. Cites references for all sources of information and includes summarized and paraphrased ideas from other authors. (Ideas and Content: prewriting, drafting, revising: N,E,T,P)

5. Constructs a bibliography with a standard style of format (e.g. MLA, APA, etc.). (Ideas and Content: prewriting, drafting, revising: N,E,T,P)

6. Applies appropriate strategies to generate technical text (e.g. brainstorming, listing, webbing, working in pairs or cooperative groups, identifying information from print sources). (Organization:prewriting, drafting, revising: N,E,T,P)

7. Organizes information within each section, paragraph, list, or graphic in a logical and effective sequence to meet the reader’s informational needs. (Organization: prewriting, drafting, revising: N,E,T,P)

8. Composes a comprehensive piece with a constructive introduction, a relevant or sequential body, and a suitable conclusion. Organization: prewriting, drafting, revising: N,E,T,P)

9. Uses appropriate transitions to connect ideas within the piece (e.g. enumerated lists, bullets, headings, subheadings, complex outlining elements). (Organization: prewriting, drafting, revising: N,E,T,P

• http://www.infoplease.com/
• http://www.yahoo.com
• http://www.yahooligans.com
• Images in the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Collection (Library of Congress) America at the Crossroads - Great Photographs From the Thirties, Edited by Jerome Prescott, Smithmark, New York, 1995. American Odyssey, Gary Nash, Glencoe, New York, 1994. Highlights in American History, Grace Kachaturoff, Schaffer Publications, Torrance, California, 1995. Life During the Great Depression, Dennis Nishi, Lucent Books, San Diego, 1998.

The students will study the chapters on the Great Depression and Roosevelt’s New Deal using the school text American Odyssey. The class will read the text, complete guided readings, and study these issues while reading articles from Roosevelt’s Presidency and readings from Highlights in American History. The Depression Essay Project will be introduced during this unit. The use of primary sources and the need to access various Internet sources will enhance the learning process. Each student will choose a photograph from sources to include the KC Public Librarv Special Collection. The students can chose a photograph from the collections of Margaret Bourke-White or Dorothea Lange. Government archives have numerous photographs from the Depression. Additional historical information will be found by accessing Yahoo , Searchopolis , and Information Please Almanac. The students will gain additional knowledge about FDR by using the Project WhistleStop Web Site. After completing the research, the student will follow the format of the essay. The time frame will be distributed in order for the student to organize his/her time and information. A class period in the computer lab will be made available to the class. Each student will have the opportunity to share his/her insights in the form of an oral presentation.

DEPRESSION ESSAY

MAKE YOUR PHOTOGRAPH COME ALIVE!

In this project students will describe the life of a person or persons who suffered hardship and desperation during the Great Depression. The students will choose an authentic photograph from the Great Depression, which can be found using various resources. Students will describe the picture and give an identity to the person(s) in the picture and explain how the depression affected their life/lives. If a photograph is chosen without people, the students will create a person or family who lives [had lived] at the site. [The teacher will show several examples.] In addition, the student will explain how FDR’s New Deal helped restore, or did not restore, the lives of the individuals. A picture of the photograph must accompany the essay and its source documented. It is required that the students use proper mechanics and a five-paragraph essay format to tell this story. The format is as follows: Paragraph 1 This is a general paragraph that is interesting and captures the reader’s attention. Paragraph 2 This is the time to introduce the person [sl in the photo. Who is this? Where do/did they live? What was their life[s] like before the Depression? Paragraph 3 What was the Great Depression? Why did it occur? Explain how this person [s] was affected, and how the individual[s] came to be in the state as shown in the photograph. Paragraph 4 Explain what the New Deal was and how specific programs helped the person[s] in your photo. If there were negative aspects discuss and be specific. Paragraph 5 This is the conclusion of the essay. Describe what happened to the person[s] in the photograph. Describe lessons learned and/or how life[s] changed for this person[s].  

THIS IS THE TIME TO SHOW YOUR CREATIVE REPORTING TALENTS!

A scoring guide will be used to assess each student. The student will receive a copy of the scoring guide at the beginning of the project and a detailed explanation of the requirements of the project.

DEPRESSION ESSAY SCORING GUIDE

• Great Depression Essay Example
• The Great Depression Essay: A+ Example

The Great Depression

Background of the great depression, some historical facts, causes of the great depression: essay basics, economic history of the great depression, stock market crash, how did it happen, failure of business, effect on farmers, what about small farmers, the issue of unemployment during the depression, unemployment rate in the u.s., what did they do, the gold standard and the great depression, government’s regulation: increase of state involvement, social issue: racism, discrimination, the conclusion of the great depression: essay ending.

If you are a school, college or university student, you will have to submit a lot of writing assignments. The essay is one of them. It seems a creative task and not hard to complete but it has some peculiarities and requirements. Here we will give you a good example of the Great Depression essay which took place in the United States. If you want to create a successful paper, you can check some tips on how to make your college essay stand out.

The Great Depression is one of the most tragical economic phenomena that took place in the American history and in the world history. It destroyed the economy, crashed the market, caused the high rate of unemployment. It took work from millions of people of America.

During Depression stock markets crashed, which affected all fields of economy, money was depreciated, prices increased, banks, other enterprises, and companies began to go bankrupt. Due to actions and events held by the government in order to be involved in the economic system, and their effects, the country’s economy was destroyed during the short period of time.

The beginning of the Depression was caused by the empowering of government involvement in the economy of the country and in the life of society. It was a period of big despair and big crash. Depression made people forget about the wealth, growth and prosperity of last decade and face new and economically unfair conditions of doing business and living circumstances.

• Time frames of The Great Depression: 1929 – 1939.
• It is the longest and the strongest period of Depression which the Western world has ever experienced.
• The start of the Depression was marked by the Black Tuesday (October 29, 1929). It was the last day of the stock market crash, it became the official start of the Depression period.
• Having its start in the USA, the Depression influenced almost every country in the world. It caused a sharp decline in production, materials consuming and distribution volumes brought economic growth to a stop, raised the unemployment rate, etc.

Researchers distinguish 5 major causes of the Great Depression, essay will disclose them.

• The crash of Stock Market in 1929. Today we remember this "Black Tuesday," the day when the stock market crash of October 29, 1929, occurred. It was the cause of the Depression and subsequent sad events.
• Failures of Banks: all markets including banks felt stock market crash. Almost 700 banks collapsed during a couple of months of the depression. More than 3,000 banks failed in 1930. Individuals lost their money, speculation started, society was shocked, people started to withdraw their money fast which hit the banks and forced them to close. The end of the decade was commemorated by 9,000 closed banks.
• Purchasing Reduction - it was an additional huge problem, investments became worthless, savings were diminished, consumer demand decreased. It caused overproduction, a big number of companies stopped their production. In response workers of factories and plants were laid off en masse.
• Economic Policy - the Depression influenced lives of nations, the government had to react and to act. In 1930 Congress passed the Tariff Act to give a protection to American industry from foreign competitors. It was based on high taxes on a big product range of imported goods. After this paper, world trade fell greatly, the companies could not supply anymore, and trade had no chance not to fall. It lasted until Franklin Roosevelt with a Congress passed new law according to which the president could negotiate lower tariffs.
• Drought. Nature and environment made their contribution. America suffered from a years-long drought which together with poor farming experience caused big losses.

It is obvious that the Great Depression influenced different countries in different ways, in a different time and rates of severity. The hardest influence was experienced by the American and European economies. Japan and Latin America suffered less.

Big enterprises, small companies, farmers, families around the countries suffered from the crisis which caused banking panic, the decline in the consumer demand. Improper policies of the government led the fall of the output in the United States, while the so-called gold standard, which gave fixed currency exchange rates to almost all countries transmitted downturn from the USA to other countries and made the crises international.

Interesting that the Gold Standard abandonment together with the ensuing monetary expansion made the recovery possible.

The impact of the Depression was huge. It included both huge changes in economic policy and extreme suffering of the people.

The stock market crash that happened in 1929 was not the only cause of the Depression, it became a kind of acceleration of global economic crisis, it started irreversible processes. By the year 1933, almost half of the American banks failed, and the unemployment rate was high - 15 million people didn’t have jobs.  

The stock market failure was the official beginning of the Great Depression. During Depression money of the investors which were in the market for the investments was lost in one moment which caused huge financial losses of clients, the banks were forced to close down. They depended on stock markets deeply that’s why it caused such a big panic and extreme withdrawal of their money.

• The market began to decline in September having the highest record in the history.
• On October 24, the market plunged at the opening bell, which caused an enormous panic.
• That day investors managed to dwell it, 5 days later the market fell and crashed decisively.
• It lost 12% of its price, investments in the amount of $14 billion were lost.
• In 2 months stockholders lost $40 billion USD that meant that the economy was desolated.

Great Depression became a worldwide business slump of the 20th century. It is one of the worst and longest years of low business activity in the USA. All industries and companies were affected by the crisis. It is the reason for their mutual work, cooperation with the stock market, they depended on stocks. The companies lost their capital, savings which allowed them to do business in the country, in fact, it started their bankruptcy, the industrial collapse.

The companies didn’t have any money to save the workforce and had to fire workers, reduce wages, all other costs. The stock market failure affected all Americans as the customers: they stopped getting the salary, they stopped spending money, buying goods as much as they did before because they didn’t have this opportunity anymore. These trade issues influenced all the companies, reduced sales, income.

The Great Depression had a highly unfavorable effect on farmers, it should be noticed that for U.S. farmers, the downturn started after World War I and ended only after two decades. Depression became one of the greatest challenges for them, here are the reasons:

• Farms were located mostly at the territory of Great Plains. This territory is famous for its dust storms, droughts. They are destructive factors in nature for the agricultural industry;
• For some time farmers were overgrazing the lands, and at one moment they faced drought. This incorrect business policy destroyed them;
• They had no crops, no food for animals, they had heat, dryness, other problems that left them with no money for making payments;
• Some farmers were capitalized on the stock market. Due to the stock market, bank failures, farmers lost their money, capital.

They had more disadvantage, suffered greatly - this was the matter of scale and capabilities, the large-scale farmers of the country had more opportunities and larger business purposes. Thousands of small farmers took agricultural equipment from the governments.

They rented it according to some programs, they had to pay money for the renting these tools. At one moment they were not capable to pay the debts, some of them had loans, the issues that occurred in the economy made them go bankrupt. As a result, they lost their lost business, all means of subsistence on a large scale.

This enormous financial crisis had a momentous impact on employment in the U.S. and other countries. The unemployment rate was rising unquestionably in big industrialized cities, in those areas where people were working in one particular industry.

Factories, plants, stores were shut down around the country from California to New York, a lot of workers lost their jobs and ability to live. Before the Great Depression has started, people refused to go on government welfare.  

Only the last resort could become a reason for this decision, newspapers published the names of people who got the welfare payments, and it was considered as a disgrace. After facing real starving times, men started to sign up for government social payments that were a painful decision for the majority of the people.

The unemployment rate rose to 25% in the USA at it was the highest rate during the time of Depression. It was difficult to survive. It means that a quarter of all population didn’t have any means of subsistence even though plants and factories were doing their best to save their workforce.

Losing a job was leading to the inability to buy food and provide other basic needs, unemployed people could not live like this for a long time.

• They had to sell their houses and settle together with other members of the families, living conditions were going down every day.
• They tried to save their families. It was the time when people stopped getting divorced, it was impossible because of the money, it was hard to live separately, people could not afford the rent.
• Asked for social payments from the government.

The Great Depression had its start during the Herbert Hoover, American people blamed their President for everything that happened. They didn’t listen to his positive public speech, instead of it, they tried to spread some humiliating jokes, metaphors. For example, they called the land which suffered from the most severe influence Hooverville.

What is the connection between the Great Depression and the Gold Standard? Was the Gold Standard the cause of the Great Depression? There are lots of the research on this question and several points of view. On the one hand, the Gold Standard can be considered as a cause of Great Depression.

It is often blamed as one of the accelerators of crisis prolongation. The reason is the next: in the period of the Gold Standard, the central banks were not able to expand credits in order to influence the deflation. The country didn’t have any money for investments, at the same time interest rates went down. People didn’t use the fixed exchange rates because of the floating rates introduction.

Blaming the Gold Standard eventually ignores the role of significant monetary manipulations made by the Federal Reserve System together with governmental institutions. Those policies would be impossible if the country had not abandoned basic important elements of the standard. The USA had to cope with costs coming up due to unemployment and social compensation.

The rate of a government involvement in the economy increased substantially. The government focused on financial markets, rich, popular fields of industry. Several institutions were established for regulation function.  

People lost their jobs, had no money, could not pay for the rent, they had to live in the shanty areas. Some people didn’t have even something to eat, to wear. A competition in a job market was huge, the market was full of highly experienced specialists who didn’t have any work. The discrimination grew that’s why African Americans could not get a job in many cases. Racism became a strong issue as well. People became more aggressive against the background of hunger, lack of money and despair.

The Great Depression became a huge blow to the economies of many countries. In a conclusion of the Great Depression we should notice that a lot of people, companies, and businesses suffered from this economic crisis. Everybody experienced big losses. And although the USA and other counties experienced different significant economic downturns after it, nothing could be compared with the severity of the Great Depression.

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The Great Depression and The New Deal

• Categories: American History Great Depression The New Deal

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Words: 1240 |

Published: Feb 8, 2022

Words: 1240 | Pages: 3 | 7 min read

Works Cited

• The American Yawp: A Free and Online, Collaboratively Built American History Textbook. Edited by Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019). [License: CC BY-SA 4.0]. (accessed 10 November 2019).
• Herbert Hoover. “On the New Deal and Liberty”, Official Report of the Proceedings of the 21st Republican National Convention, 1936, pp. 115-19, 122-24. (accessed 10 November 2019).
• Fireside Chat 6: On Government and Capitalism (September 30, 1934) . Authored by: Franklin D. Roosevelt. Provided by: The American Presidency Project. Located at: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=14759. License: Public Domain: No Known Copyright. (accessed 10 November 2019).

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